New insights published in the New England Journal of Medicine this week show that early exposure to peanuts can be beneficial for children as they get older.
The insights show early interaction with the legume protects kids from developing peanut allergies later as they grew up as compared to withdrawing it totally from their diets.
The researchers investigated whether the rate of peanut allergy remained low after 12 months of peanut avoidance among participants who had consumed peanuts as compared to those who had avoided peanuts entirely.
The scientists noted that peanut allergy develops early in life and is rarely outgrown, thus entirely keeping them away from this legume, did not keep them away from the allergy.
Babies who first tried peanuts as infants and continued eating them until they were five years old could go for a 12-month period of peanut avoidance without an increase of the peanut allergy.
“Overall, after introduction of peanuts in the first year of life, peanut consumption for the following four years, and a year of abstinence from peanuts, the peanut-consumption group had a prevalence of peanut allergy that was 74 per cent lower than the prevalence in the peanut-avoidance group,” the authors observed.
